Another day another dollar. Usual start to the day at 8 am with breakfast and the usual complaint’s about snoring and who kept who awake! Nicky is the first off for tests today running and lung capacity, Noel will be away later,He had a bypass 2 years ago and was out of breath on Saturday with some sweating, so in for a check up. I guess he’s being doing too much on his farm,he admits to not being gentle enough with himself.

Nicky’s back before lunch. Results are showing he could have an enlarged Aorta, which will probably mean a valve op at some stage, more importantly could end his career in the army, not a good prospect for a young fit man in his prime(or so he thought).

Dave had a good night and we reminisce a little over Tom O’Donnell’s death and the funny side of the private life of Tom & Pascal. When Tom got his first show on Big L after guesting a number of week’s with Eamonn O’Connor on Monday nights, he loved coming here(The Regional Hospital), to record people in the wards and play requests and music for them on his own show on Tuesday nights. Trouble was he would come back to the studio with all these different audio tapes in no particular order, except the one Tom had in his head, and the engineer(Myself and alternatively Mike Byrnes), had to play in the order that Tom wanted. Trouble was a tape could be playing with ‘stuff’ he had recorded at the hospital and without warning would slide into something he had recorded months ago of a completely different nature, at which point he would jump up from his chair in Studio 2 and run into me with another tape he wanted to replace the previous one with. Complete chaos, but I don’t think the listeners were any the wiser, and generally speaking the shows were well received,despite the traumatized condition of the engineer after one of Tom’s adventures. Dave get’s the all clear to go home and is off and running just after lunch. We promise to meet up for a drink when I come out the other side! After the doctors visit today looks like the 19th is a day I could be travelling North east to the Mater.

Noel is also back after his treadmill trials and looks like he might be heading home soon!

Nicky’s results are back but he still has to ‘have a chat’ with the doctor regarding the cardiograph. It would appear he is not available this afternoon, (and won’t be for the rest of the Day), so a big disappointment there. Noel is told he can go home but must wait for a monitor system to be attached to his chest to return with it within 24 hours. He’s fully dressed and ready to go by 2pm.She(admin), will be back in an hour!

4pm Sarah, our student nurse comes to inform Noel he doesn’t have to wait for the monitor and can go home straight away. His wife has been waiting in the wings so to speak, and drives in from Limerick, should be less than 20 minutes. He says his goodbye’s and disappears down the corridor wishing Nicky and myself good luck.

John from Listowel arrives and is duly deposited in the chair next to the only bed on the west wall. Despite the chair being very ‘cumfy’, John is far from comfortable. He must be well into his 80’s and is somewhat slumped in the chair. Looks like he might be in the chair for the night! Nicky’s visitors are in and he asked to put on the match(very polite), sure says I (what match?), Celtic v Juventus, after the 1st goal in Celtic’s net after a couple of minutes, we both know where this match is going. Pity, Celtic play very hard aginst a manipulative team, but at 4-0 it’s going to be an uphill struggle for the return leg. Rod the Mod (Rod Stewart),will not be happy tonight!

The nurses have arrived to get John into bed, takes a good 20 minutes, still doesn’t look very comfortable, but I couldn’t see him staying in the chair all night.

All our visitors are gone and Nicky switches the lights and TV off about 9.30pm, probably not realizing the’night nurse’ has still to pay us all a visit for blood pressure checks and good night pills and jabs, I think he wants to get to the following day and his release as quickly as possible.